


Little White Lie Of Omission

by momentinsubtext



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen, Year That Never Was
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-04-13
Updated: 2009-04-13
Packaged: 2018-02-15 08:16:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2221986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/momentinsubtext/pseuds/momentinsubtext
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Martha Jones has a secret from The Year That Never Was. No one has ever asked, and she's never seen any reason to bring it up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little White Lie Of Omission

**Author's Note:**

> Cross-posted from my Teaspoon account.

Martha Jones has one secret, and that's alright, isn't it? She doesn't have to tell them everything about her journey across the Earth. Besides, they all know what happened in Japan. It was a slaughter.  
  
But they weren't there. They hadn't spent long, sleepless nights huddled in red painted houses, trying to drown out the screams of people dying just outside the window. They didn't hear the Toclofane's childish, gleeful laughter just inches above their heads while they clung to the ground, blood splattering onto their bodies as the monsters spun through the air, shaking it off like dogs coming in from the rain. They hadn't walked through those empty streets for days while the smell of death and rot filled the air like smog, looking for just one other living person. They hadn't seen the sky, just after the Toclofane left, all the blood condensing in the air, a red haze that had never quite faded, not even in her mind.  
  
  
 _  
Once, just before it became too much, she encountered a woman carrying a small bundle in her arms. The woman was thin, as if she hadn't eaten in days. She probably hadn't. Her face was haggard, worn as if she'd been weep for a long time and had finally run out of tears. Her eyes were dead, but something in them woke up when she laid eyes on Martha. She knew she was going to die, no matter what Martha did; she wasn't even sane anymore.  
  
She was stronger than she looked; Martha was sure her arm would bruise where the woman grabbed her. "I can't help you," she said, her heart breaking. "I'm sorry. I can't. There's nothing left." She tried to pull away, but the woman just clung to her, mouth working wordlessly. She must have screamed herself out. It was easy to do, when you were knee-deep in the carnage. "Please, let me go. I can't help you. Please."  
  
The woman pushed her bundle into Martha's arms; she made a low, croaking noise that could have been a plea. Resigned, Martha looked down and for the first time realised that the bundle was in fact a child - small, starved, probably less than three months old. The woman was still hanging on her arm, staring intently into her face when Martha looked up.  
  
Whatever the woman saw in Martha's face then seemed to be enough. Her mouth twisted in what was probably intended to be a smile, and she touched Martha's cheek almost fondly. Then her grip went slack as she crumpled to the ground, already dead.  
_  
  
  
Nobody asked her how she travelled that year. They assume she went by foot, by boat or car when she could. They're wrong, of course. Historians often are. The Earth is too big for anyone to travel in a year. No one thinks about it, they just assume that she did it the way they say. (They're too old to ask how Santa does the same thing in one night, too.) But, if they did stop to think about it - she understands why they don't, it's too painful to think about - they'd come to the same conclusion she did.  
  
Time travel.  
  
Well, she didn't have a Tardis, but she had the next best thing - Jack's wristband. It was good enough. It took her a while to figure out how to work it, they probably never thought she'd be able to do so. After that, she could spend months in one country, then go back and spend the same months in another. At any one time there were probably at least six of her world wide.  
  
(Under ordinary circumstances, it would have been a disaster; there would have been Reapers everywhere. But the Master had solved that problem neatly with his paradox machine. Irony at it's finest, that.)  
  
If she needed to cross an ocean - _zap!_ She was there. If she needed to make a quick getaway - _zap!_ She was safe. And if it all got to be too much and she needed a break _zap!_ She could sleep.  
  
  
  
 _Martha almost didn't save the baby. She was just so numb from. . .everything. What could saving this one little life - this one little life that couldn't even speak - do? How could she care for a child in the midst of all this? She almost left the baby lying with it's mother. But she didn't; it wasn't in her nature to give up._  
  
 _She did the only thing she could think of to do; she brought the baby back in time, something over twenty years, long enough to ensure that it would have good life before the world went to hell. She found a place to stay - someone's summer cabin, probably - and got them both cleaned up. The baby was a girl._  
  
 _She didn't know what country they were in, there were no landmarks nearby. She didn't know how long they'd been there, she hadn't noticed the passage of days properly for quite some time. She didn't know what to do next; she could give the girl to social services, that would require an explanation that she just didn't have. She was still pondering a solution when the baby began to cry. A second later she heard the vehicle in the driveway._  
  
 _She put herself between the baby in her make-shift crib and the door. There were footsteps in the front of the house; her eyes remained fixed on the door. It swung open._  
  
 _"Jack!" Martha exclaimed, and promptly collapsed into uncontrollable sobbing._

_Jack had his arms around her in an instant, and she clug to him for all she was worth, crying into his coat. It was a relief to have a sold, living body to hold onto again, after all the death she' seen. Jack, despite what a shock such a reaction must have been, took it in stride, rubbing circles on her back and murmuring generic condolences until she'd calmed down._

_"There now," he said when all that remained of her sobs were a few stray hiccups. He tilted her chin up and wiped away the tears with his thumbs. "Think you can tell me what happened here?"_  
  
 _She told him what she could - no details so as not to screw up the timelines, and she didn't mention the Doctor - and Jack listened without interrupting._  
  
 _"So, what were you thinking of doing?" he asked when she was finished._  
  
 _"I don't know," she admitted. "In my own time, I'd smuggle her into a hospital - pretend I was a transfer or something, they'd buy that - and give her to someone whose baby was stillborn." She shrugged. "But I don't have the credentials now."_  
  
 _"Let me take her," Jack said after a moment of consideration. "I'll find her a safe home. I promise."_  
  
 _"Why would you do that? You don't even know me, yeah?"_  
  
 _Jack lifted her hand to his lips, kissed it, then tapped the face of the wristwatch. "Someday, I'll trust you with this. That's good enough for me, right now. Alright?"_  
  
 _Martha nodded, blushing slightly, and decided that Jack was the most wonderful man on the planet, ever._  
  
 _"Good. Besides," he added. "It's just the sort of thing that would piss off the higher-ups." He kissed her on the forehead. "You just go on and save the world, or whatever it is you've been doing."_  
  
  
  
Sometimes, Martha wonders what became of that little girl. She's almost asked Jack twice, but each time decided against it. She knows that if she knew, she'd be tempted to go and find the girl, to talk to her, and that would be a mistake. Mostly, she just wants to put that whole sorry mess of a year behind her.  
  
Besides, she tells herself, from what she's heard of the old Torchwood regime, it's entirely likely that Jack doesn't even remember. It's hardly as if he could have watched over her her whole life, is it?

 

  
_Some nights, Toshiko Sato dreams about a world with a red sky and wakes up knowing with absolute certainty that she shouldn't be alive._

**Author's Note:**

> This story was nominated for a Children of Time Award and recced on Calufrax, which is one of the coolest things to ever happen to me.


End file.
